Adnan Ghosheh, Senior Water & Sanitation Specialist, remembers a time not so long ago when everyone in Gaza could drink water from their tap. That was in the late 1990s, but so much water has been pumped...

Snow in the deserts of Saudi Arabia. A drought in Morocco that wipes out half the wheat harvest. Extreme summer temperatures reaching 54 degrees Celsius in Kuwait. This is the new normal of extreme weather...

The municipal management of household garbage or solid waste is one of the simplest, most common signs of a working relationship between the state and its citizens. Lebanon’s recent problem—of municipalities...

As far back as 320 BC, the Ancient Greeks made laws forbidding people to throw away their waste or leave it to accumulate in unpaved streets and roadways. They realized that dumping household garbage and...

Wars cause devastating human suffering as well as long-term damage to a country’s economy and its infrastructure. Sounds obvious, but just how bad are the consequences of conflict? Quantifying how much...

Between $3.3 to $4.5 trillion in investments each year will be needed to fund the Sustainable Development Goals, according to UN estimates. As one way to meet these staggering needs, the international...

Judging by economic data alone, the revolutions of the 2011 Arab Spring should have never happened. The numbers from the decades before had told a glowing story: the region had been making steady progress...

While other emerging regions thrived, the Middle East and North Africa’s (MENA’s) aggregate export performance has been consistently weak over the past two decades. Using detailed firm-level export data—collected...

WEST BANK, August 17, 2015—Spanning more than 300 kilometers in the West Bank, and continuing across Jordan, Israel and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, the Abraham trekking path is considered one of the...

For many medium to small companies, winning a government contract can mean steady business and a path to growth. It should usually be a cause for celebration. Not so for Shirzad. Celebration quickly turned...

While you might think putting money into pre-primary schools and childcare would be the last thing anyone should care about in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) right now, new data suggests it should...

“The hardest thing to receive is quality of care,” declared Muhanad Al-Dawary, a resident of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, in response to a Facebook poll on the quality of public services...

Gaza’s electricity supply was severely damaged by Israeli military forces during the recent July-August conflict. Around ten percent of Gaza’s residents—some 190,000 people—remain without any electricity....

October 30, 2014 -- Cities worldwide generated more than 1.3 billion tons of solid waste in 2010. As drivers of economic activity and recipients of millions of rural migrants every year, cities expect...

Across the Middle East and North Africa, countries are being forced to face up to a harsh reality—that, left as they are now, their economies won’t create anything like enough jobs for the hundreds of...

The ceasefire reached at the end of August 2014 in Gaza provided international organizations the breathing space they needed to draw-up plans for recovery and reconstruction. The latest conflict has been...

Water loss, and its operational and financial consequences, is a major concern for urban water utilities in the Mediterranean region. Losses, both physical and commercial, are due to leakages and the failure...

Abraham Path, or Masar Ibrahim in Arabic, is a cross-cultural, long-distance tourism route running along the path once walked by Abraham/Ibrahim, the father of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. More than...